76 SABINA MURRAY The Gold Key • he speaker in this case is a middle-aged witch, me, and my reflection—oof!—that curtain between what is now and what was, tells a story all its own. Age, with its assaults, I find funny because, of course, now I am wise, and how can one not laugh at how much of life is livedinignorance,inthralltodesire?Time,thiswasyourgift,andhadyou asked, I might have said, “I’ll keep my face,” but now, knowing how things are and why, I would never trade that knowledge for dewy skin and men clawing at my skirts, expecting me to laugh at their molestations, physical or otherwise. My limbs are heavy, and I carry weight, although I barely eat. Just some nuts, some berries, a piece of dried meat I chew over and over, knowing my teeth are poorly moored in my gums, ready to desert me. This is the middle, the hinge. I am being flung into oblivion. Watch myarc!Ihavejustbeenreleased.Middle,middleage,howmeaninglessto be neither beginning nor end, how hilarious to see I am no longer desired but not yet pitied. I am invisible now. Just a middle, a hinge, a catch of breath held in the instant between inhalation and release. ‘ The boy is my son. Shall I tell you of how he was born? Veins caught around his tiny body, encasing him in a net of pulsing blood. Shall I tell you of how the midwife knew I could not be cut? That had she done so, he would have bled out in an instant, a small blue piece of flesh and hair and bone? This is something I still fear, that stilling of the beautiful , black-haired boy, although you will remind me, No, no, he is well, he is strong. But once he could have bled out. But (is this happy? it must be) he lived. Is he cursed by the bloody net, or is he blessed to have survived it? I do not want to give him the key, though I know it is his—his inheritance. Still, he is better off without it. If I could, I would, when he needs shelter, fold him back into my womb and hold him there. But t 77 again, you say, he is fully grown and he is strong. He would not fit. The mother purse has long ceased to function. Even this is funny. And it is his key, you say. Mother, give it to him! But mothers don’t have to do anything. They’re mothers. So I tell him to sit. Sit and eat, it’s chicken how you like it, and there is rice, as always. And there is a spoon for you, too, because that is how you prefer to eat. Here’s the deal. I will tell you a story, and if you can guess the ending, I will give you the key. And with this key— But it’s my key, he says. Everything that is yours was once mine. I grew you— Not the story about the bloody net again. Not that story, I say, but another. ‘ There was once a woman who fell asleep, and when she entered her dream she found herself in a land of such magic that she wished never to wake. Her dream had dropped her into a green field with a gentle wind riffling the long grass, and a bird was singing a complicated tune where the notes went up and up, breaking into ever yet sweeter trills, and there was a tree heavy with apples, her favorite, and that dull ache in her hands was gone, and there was a white horse tearing at the turf, and beyond the horse a tree of such startling symmetry that she wondered if symmetry was necessary to beauty, because that tree was so gorgeous she would think such a thing— I know the ending, he says. Can I have the key? Give me another chance, I say. ‘ Once, on an island, there lived a goat whose coat was covered with bells, and when it moved the bells created an uncanny chiming, and there was a king who wished to have...
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Jun 1, 2021
S Kiene + 1
Open Access
